Olympus OMD EM-1 Short Review

OMD EM-1 Short Review

The OMD EM-1

Olympus announced the OMD EM-5 in February 2012, and it was regarded as one of the best Micro Four-Thirds (MFT) body at that time. However, less than two years later, the EM-1 was revealed and released in October/November 2013. Is this camera really worth the buck – is it a powerful camera in its own rights? We had a few days with the EM-1 with an Olympus 60mm Macro, and the 12mm F2 to find out.

In reviewing the IQ of the MFT body, I have stepped down my requirements owing to the fact that it IS a MFT camera – hence I will not be using the bastion of Leica M series to compare it with. We KNOW that the bokeh/depth of field of a MFT will never ever beat that of a full-frame and it is unfortunately, one of the saddest fact of any MFT body.

Aesthetics (6.5/10):

Placed next to my Leica M9P, the EM-1 looks very, very modern. Olympus chose to forego the vintage look that they had clinched so perfectly with the EM-5 to add on a DSLR grip to the body. Yes – the camera now handles ergonomically fantastic but now it looks like an ugly mix of Chinese and Indian food. In fact, the EM-1 looks more like a DSLR now, especially since the size of it is not in particularly very small. Held next to the M9, there is hardly any notable differences except in the weight.

So, so many buttons...

Ergonomics (8/10):

The EM-1 handles perfectly and feels very light to the Leica-enthusiast. It almost feels plastic-like, which is a welcomed change to the brick-metal weight of the M9. The added rubberized handgrip is perhaps the best part of the design (which took off all aesthetics) as I was able to handle almost 90% of my shots with one hand, partly in thanks to the 5-axis IBIS as well. The EM-1 starts to falter as it gets ambitious – there are way too many dials and buttons. HDR, AF, on-off, AEL-AFL switch, Live-View switch…. The list goes on. There are nineteen (19!) buttons (no this is not accurate, I did not bother to check), 2 switches, and 3 dials on this beast. I mean, seriously? In contrast, the M9 has only 11 buttons, 1 switch and 2 dials. This many buttons took away the ergonomics of it – it just shows that the engineers couldn’t be more innovative enough. Because of this, I took 2 points off the ergo, simply because I felt the design was lazy.

Image Quality (9.5/10):

Boy, was I impressed with the out-of-camera images from this little/huge beast. Olympus did the correct choice in removing the AA filter and upping the sensor IQ as this, honestly, is the only selling point of the OMD at the moment (we will talk more about it at the conclusion). JPEGs that come straight of the camera, which can be then directly Wi-Fi to your phone makes it a luxury for the travelling photographer. These images look fantastic. The detail is fantastic. The 5-axis IBIS makes it super-easy to capture relatively sharp shots without much skill.

The RAW files are the real deal though. When I loaded the images into LightRoom on my 1440p screen, I was shocked. I had expected 16 megapixels to look like crap and I was impressed. I had walked around the supermarket taking pictures of random stuff and I *did not* expect any of my images to turn out good. But I was pleasantly surprised! I only had to do minimal adjustments, such as adding very minimal clarity. The camera captures white balance correctly 99% of the time, the auto-focus is SPOT-ON perfect ALL the time.

  

Red Apples

What I really like about the camera however, is the color rendition. The apples look deliciously red and my aji-tama (tasteful egg) looks exactly the same as real-life.

Next, I had some fun with the in-camera HDR composition. I was not very impressed – but neither was I unhappy. I would say that the HDR does what it does to a limited extent. You will not expect overly dramatic HDR, and it also really depends on your landscape. I chose a bad place with the shot below – but hey, I am not a fan of HDRs.

HDR on Overcast Evening

Olympus seems to do some kind of sharpening to the pictures. When cropped to 100%, you could see a grainy texture to the images. I am not in particular unhappy about that but it should be something to take note of if you are not one that likes that kind of feel.

Conclusion (7/10):

Olympus has done very well with the EM-1 image quality. I have not expected such good IQ from a MFT, and I was pleasantly surprised. The camera also handles ergonomically well if you can forget the ugliness of it, and the shutter sound is beautifully soft and even cute. There are also many other features of the EM-1 which was not reviewed (I mean, we do have 20 buttons!) – such as waterproofing, 5-IBIS, and the other multitude of functions which could sway the potential buyer to getting one. I for one got it for purely macro photos, and it does that, pretty much perfectly.

Unfortunately, the release of the EM-1 came at a time where Sony also announced their upcoming A7 and A7r series which is a full-frame mirrorless in a body that is very similar in size (maybe smaller?) to the OMD. The OMD is NOT cheap, it is priced at $1399 USD whereas the A7R, which packs 36 megapixels, is priced at only $2399 USD. This differential is very easily justifiable in my opinion. An informed buyer at this point of time would hold-off the purchase, and wait for more IQ samples for the A7/r.

The OMD does of course, have a wide-array of lenses that are fantastic optically at the moment. While Sony currently have crappy lenses for the A7/A7R, adaptors can serve to augment (we can use leica lenses!) that, and Sony has announced a very big lineup to support the A series. In addition, with Sony breaking the barrier of having the smallest FF camera, we can expect other giants to go into this market and very soon, there will be great lenses available for FF mirrorless tiny cameras. In fact, we just had the Nikon DF being announced as well. All this will only cause the OMD value to keep going downhill and thus it will not make to be a good purchase.

Despite a bad value, the OMD EM-1 by itself is a strangely great camera. I feel that it does have some kind of elusive charm where I cannot quite say that it is beautiful but yet has its own mysterious usefulness. In terms of size, it is huge and does not pack the punch of the new FF-mirrorless, and it is not small enough like the Panasonic GM, yet it still delivers beautiful, sharp and colorful pictures.

It is in a nutshell, neither here nor there.

Samples Gallery (some images are cropped):